Competence programme for electrical workers

As a licensed electrical worker, you must complete a competence programme to refresh your knowledge and assess your competence every 2 years. You’ll need to do this before you can renew your practising licence.

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All registered electrical workers must hold a practising licence to carry out prescribed electrical work. You need to renew your licence every two years. Before you can do this, you need to complete the competency programme (if your last programme was over two years ago).

Competence programme updated

The programme has had its own refresher recently, so you’ll find it works slightly differently this time round.

How it works

You’ll need to enrol in a competency course with a provider of your choice, who runs a course that’s relevant to your class of registration. We recommend you book in early to make sure you get a place in the course you want to attend.

Email reminder

We send you an email reminder three months before your licence is due to expire. That’s a good time to get organised and book yourself in to a course if you haven’t updated your competency already.

You'll need to complete two e-learning modules before attending a course in person. You can either:

wait for the provider to send you a link to the modules when you enrol with them, or

log in to the learning site to complete the modules at any time before you attend a course.

Make sure you complete the modules and print out a completion certificate before you attend the course in person. You’ll have to take the certificate to with you when you go — your provider will use it to confirm that you’ve successfully completed the full programme.

When you attend the course in person, you’ll:

get a basic first aid and CPR refresher

be given an update on any relevant current electrical issues by the facilitator

complete a written assessment, made up of 10 questions. This is 'open book' — you can take reference material in with you to use during the assessment

do a practical testing exercise.

Training providers and courses

Next steps

Once you’ve completed (and passed) the competence programme, your provider will update your details in the EWRB portal. When you apply to renew your practising licence, we’ll already have confirmation that you’ve met your competency obligations and you are eligible to renew.